Sisterland

Rating:
Summary: long, but worth every page
Review: As SISTERLAND opens, Hilly poses a question: Is it better to know the truth, no matter how unpleasant, behind surface niceness or not? Her question is prompted partly by her recent visit to a concentration camp in France --- an experience that troubles her more than she ever expected. During the trip, Hilly's sister Zoe points out that their grandmother was German and that she makes frequent racist comments. Zoe even goes so far as to offhandedly call HeidiGran a Nazi, a charge her family instantly and thoroughly denies.

Hilly and Zoe argue constantly as they prepare for their grandmother to move in with their family. HeidiGran, suffering from Alzheimer's disease, experiences confused periods interposed with more lucid ones. She can no longer distinguish which of her memories are secrets that she's guarded from everyone her entire life. The truth is at odds with what her family has always believed. One by one, she begins to share enticing bits of these dangerous revelations with her shocked granddaughters. However, when questioned further, HeidiGran retreats into confusion.

Hilly feels compelled to uncover the truth about her grandmother's past before HeidiGran's memory is entirely erased by her disease. In the meantime, she worries about and is angered by Zoe's new friends, one of whom wears a swastika. Did Zoe's friends attack Hilly's Palestinian friend, injured in a racist attack? Hilly's concerns about racism are even closer to her heart as she begins to fall in love for the first time with her friend's brother.

Along the way, SISTERLAND tells the story of HeidiGran's childhood through flashbacks interwoven into Hilly's story. While the reader is soon clued in on HeidiGran's heartbreaking secret, there's a whopper of a surprise yet in store before the tale is done.

This is a long book, but the pace never lags. I found myself completely absorbed by Hilly's search for, and her family's transformation by, HeidiGran's truth. I highly recommend SISTERLAND for anyone who enjoys an amazingly good read crammed full of family relationships, romance, history, mystery and sympathetic characters.

--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon (...)